1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a broadcast program recorder for receiving and recording a broadcast signal transmitted along with an electronic program guide information in a terrestrial digital broadcasting.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a broadcast program recorder such as a video recorder or a hard disk recorder with a television tuner is equipped with a clock, and has a function of automatically recording a program, when a channel of a broadcasting station to be recorded, a recording start time and a recording end time are set up. However, since the video recorder or the hard disk recorder operates with reference to a time of an onboard clock, if the time of the onboard clock is not keeping the correct time, the program may not be correctly reproduced or recorded.
Thus, various techniques for correcting the time of the onboard clock in the recorder have been proposed. For example, in JP-A-11-136755, a time correction method and a portable telephone terminal unit for use with the method is disclosed. With the technique, an equation of time information from a standard time in a service area at a base station is stored corresponding to an identification number of the base station, a report information from the base station is received, and the equation of time information corresponding to the identification number contained in the report information is read out. The equation of time information is compared with the equation of time information at previous time of correction, and the time is corrected by adding or subtracting a difference to or from the previously corrected time.
Also, in JP-A-11-311686, a computer time/date adjusting device and a method thereof is disclosed. Moreover, in JP-A-2000-075070, a time output device and a time correction method is disclosed. In addition, in JP-A-2001-216048, an information processing device, a method thereof and a program storage medium is disclosed.
In this manner, the techniques as disclosed in the above patents are applied to a broadcast program recorder including an onboard clock to easily make the time correction.
On the other hand, in a terrestrial digital broadcasting (ATSC system) that has been lately started in the North America, a broadcasting signal is transmitted with the present date and time information. Therefore, in a digital broadcast program recorder with a digital broadcasting tuner of ATSC, the present time information is acquired along with a broadcast signal, and the time of the onboard clock is corrected, based on the time information of the broadcast signal.
The present time information is recorded in a format called a GPS Second and UTC (Universal Time of Coordinated, Greenwich Mean Time), and the program start time information is also recorded. Also, the difference information of the GPS Second and UTC is included in the broadcast signal, in which the program length information (length of program) is specified in seconds from the start time.
In the terrestrial digital broadcasting of ATSC, the GPS Second holds, as a system time, the temporal information that is the elapsed time in a unit of second from AM 0:00 on Jan. 6, 1980. And the system time is converted into the UTC, and the normal date/time display is made by reflecting an equation of time that is different depending on the district.
In the terrestrial digital broadcasting of ATSC, an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) is superposed on a broadcast signal to be transmitted. The digital broadcast program recorder allows a program reservation to be made very easily, employing the EPG.
In this manner, with the conventional broadcast program recorder, if the time of the onboard clock is corrected, and a desired program is recorded by reservation, the program can be securely recorded from the start to the end. Also, when a plurality of programs broadcasted in series from the same broadcasting station are desired to record, all the programs can be securely recorded by reserving and setting the time zone where these programs are broadcasted.
However, with the conventional broadcast program recorder, one could confirm the information of channel, date and time recorded in viewing the recorded program, but there was a problem that when recording a plurality of programs from the same broadcasting station successively, one could not confirm the information for all the programs. That is, though the channel, date and time zone in which a plurality of programs were recorded successively could be confirmed, the name and the recording time zone for each program could not be confirmed. This also occurs with the case of a terrestrial broadcast program recorder in which the information of each program could be acquired with the EPG. Therefore, in some cases, the user for the broadcast program recorder cannot confirm what was recorded before reproducing the recorded program.